I've been tagged!

Thanks to Mere and Macy for the tag!!!

Funniest comic strip? Cathy

What group of people generally have the most informed opinions? Young movie actors.

If you could rule any part of space, which section would you choose: The furthest sector from the one Benjamin Linus rules, and one preferably not affected by Earth’s global warming.

What kind of fish would you least want to fight to the death? A shark. Hands down.

Acid rain or regular rain? Acid Rain

The question is which would you rather be caught in naked? Oh, definitely regular rain.

Most talented actor? Dennis Quaid

Samuria or ninja? I’ve been told I think, speak, and look more like a samurai but my movements are more ninja-ish, so I don’t know. Which do ya’ll think I’m more like?

Dream wingman for cruising state street? William Jefferson Clinton.

Person most able to sell you an Antarctic snipe hunting reserve? Same

Country with the best mail order brides? Is there even a close second to Russia? Dumb question

Favorite book? "Books are for nerds and old people", by Yourmom

Tutes or stinkers? Stinkers

Funniest ad ever? Old Navy’s talking mannequins

Culture with worst sense of humor? Zulu

Most hilarious culture? Judging from Bjork, probably Iceland.

Best New Guinuea dish? To be honest, they are almost all nasty.

Favorite bounty hunter’s wife: Dog the bounty hunter’s wife. I never knew of Bobafett’s wife. Mrs. Dog seems rough, but actually has a certain class about her.

Favorite rapper: Shaq

Actor you most regret leaving the movie business: Again, Shaq.

Your best reality show idea: The Biggest Chunker. 30 waifish runway models are put on a small island made entirely of chocolate for a year. The woman who gains the most weight wins 100 million dollars and a Lane Bryant modeling contract. Also Rod Blagojevich and Joe Biden will play a role, but I’m not sure what yet. There are also tigers (dyed brown to look like fake chocolate tigers) and landmines on the island, and the tigers are wicked-hungry because they don’t eat chocolate.

Barracus Flavius

I have been meaning to write a post about the disgust I feel at the way the Obama Administration, half of congress, and much of the American population is waging war (both covertly and overtly) on people who have gained wealth through industry and intelligence. We will all be screwed if wealthy people are legislated out of existence. But my bro just wrote that post, so I'll link to his here.


In the same vein, here's the quote of the day. Nothing your conservative grandma hasn't e-forwarded to you lately, but it's pithy and true nonetheless.


"You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity, by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."

Adrian Rogers

I've got news for you,

fancy ladies.

Do you want me to tell you about a store that has even better cupcakes than Sprinkles, Magnolia's Bakery, and Cake Fetish?

It's called the Any Lady With A Betty Crocker Cupcake Mix Made In Her Kitchen Store, and they have franchises in all 50 states!

Zion on my mind

Rebecca and I have talked a couple times lately about where we would like to end up living permanently. I’m going to list my pros and cons of the optional locales and ask you who live in any of them to tell me why you think yours is the awesomest place to be. Ideally we’d like to live in large family centers (Atlanta/Utah), but there are other possibilities.

Utah
Pros:
Family
Awesome outdoors
Lots of little Mormons for our kids to play with.
I love SLC
We’re going to have to make the trek there eventually when everything hits the fan and we need my parents’ 50 yr food storage supply and the Brethren call me to lead the Delta Force River Unit of the Mormon Battalion (hang in there little rotator cuffs; greatness beckons you both). Be honest and tell me that you wouldn’t feel just a titch safer being in Utah when the moon turns red as blood and the 2 prophets are killed in Jeruselam. Lyposuction billboards or not, I’m gonna be wherever Elder Eyring is. I know where I most definitely don’t want to be: Vegas or LA. Good luck not turning into a big tasty salt statue when you’re running away and look back at the mushroom cloud.

Cons:
Having lived away for a while, everytime I go back, I like Utah less and less and notice the following things I didn’t notice before:
Obnoxious culture (style, hair, specific trends and general trendiness, competitiveness, extreme homogeneity, fake women and self-satisfied dudes, feelings of group superiority, materialism, MLM, etc)
Comely but sucky looking people. Go to any Café Rio or Target and you feel like you’re at a UVSC party.
Super worldly
Ugly architecture
Some ugly landscape, but some very pretty
Second worst children names in the world (Right behind Watts, LA.)
Excruciatingly bleak-looking winters
Highland
Alpine

Georgia
Pros:
Family
Pretty and green
All the barter money we can use (even, i'm told, to buy a house, if it’s under 500K)

Cons:
Wife hates it
Humid
Lots of 2-way racism
Evangelicals

California
Pros:
Gorgeous
Perfect climate
Beach
No end of things to do
Constant visitors

Cons:
So Cal- worldiest place in the world. Makos, blues, and the occasional Great White
Nor Cal- Most liberal place in the world. Waterways dominated by Great Whites.
Both-overcrowded, ridiculously expensive, obnoxious cultures

Albuquerque
Pros:
If you own a Hobie or Esprit t-shirt, you’re the best dressed bloke/sheila in town
The best culture I’ve ever experienced. Educated, active, friendly people who manage to be the most accepting, non judgemental, down to earth folks I know of.
Best climate in the U.S., after SoCal. 4 mild seasons, all with clear blue skies.
Very unworldly, unmaterialistic, uncompetitive.
Good base of Normons
Political diversity

Cons:
Ugly landscape
Lack of good rivers/lakes
Hard to get entice visitors. “Oh…Albuquerque. Sure we’ll come. Oh, um, actually our summer vacations are booked for the next five years in Siberia, Ethiopia, Evanston, Darfur, and Vernal.”
Business limitations, given the small population and relatively low collective wealth.

Colorado
Pros:
Beautiful
Great outdoors
Close to family

Cons:
Harsh winters
Expensive

East Coast
Pros:
Beautiful and green
Great architecture
Big cities

Cons:
Poison Ivy
Humidity
Harsh Winters
7 Mormons= 90% chance your girls will be pregnant by 17

The Dirty South
Pros:
It’s neat to see many of your neighbors featured on the tv show “Cops”
Beautiful
Milder winters
Close to family
Good folks

Cons:
Poison Ivy
Evangelicals
Humidity

China Series

I don't think you people have any idea how large and threatening China is to our way of life. To give you an idea, I'm going to share some staggering statistics in this ongoing series. And please, call your congresspeople and tell them to say "NO" on China.

Next time you're buying your kid a hot dog at the ball park on beautiful summer day, chew on the following:

Fact: China recently passed Japan as the U.S.'s biggest creditor.

Fact: If you had a dollar for every baby born in China last month, you would have become a billionaire by the 19th.

Fact: China's navy has more ships than the U.S. Navy has sailors.

I write an epic post about a very famous movie star in a seminary video and get 4 comments in a week, then my wife writes a lame post about a baby being born and BOOM! 23 comments in 2 days. Whatever. I don't even care.



Here's a link to a great, 1/2 page feature of a dude who runs his charity like he ran his business, with awesome results. This exemplifies why I think every kind of institution (Non-profits, Government, etc.) should be run like businesses. Great business people aren't just great at "business." They're great at solving problems, organizing and motivating people, eliminating inefficiency and waste, and achieving remarkable results. In any sector. Sounds corny, but that's how I feel.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/magazine/entrepreneur/2009/april/200706.html

And that is the reason Lon Gibson and I produced (I'm only in the harmony part), and believe in the message in, this video.

Gotham's finest

So the other day we were watching a short movie in seminary. It's called "Sorrow for My Sins," and it's on this year's Seminary New Testament DVD. It's the one where the gal at BYU meets with her bishop for her pre-wedding interview. She talks about how happy she is and how great her fiance is. But over the course of the interview the bishop learns that a certain someone had been doing the devil's bidness with a past boyfriend and the rest of the movie is about her repenting for it. Throughout the movie it shows very quick shots of her strapping blond fiance, with vintage early 90's hair and blue denim shirts, and at the end he has a little speaking role. I kept thinking he looked familiar and then I realized who we were dealing with:































Aaron Eckert. He's been in a lot of stuff, but you might know him best as:








Turns out he was raised LDS, served a mission, and graduated from BYU. He's not active anymore, but still, it's always nice to have some class in our seminary features.

Misc.

One of the disadvantages of not living in or near a really big city is that NPR is only on half the day, with the other half being devoted to that old school Mexican music where all the songs are to the same polka beat. Anyway, that means that I listen to more right wing radio. I've listened at one point or another to all of them and can't figure out how Sean Hannity got to the top. Love them or hate them, you can at least detect the niche that all the others inhabit. Rush is the founder, Glenn Beck is funny, Michael Medved is brilliant and does pop culture in addition to the regular stuff, Laura Ingraham is a women, Michael Savage is unhinged, Boortz is libertarian and funny as well. But what is Hannity? How did this happen? Someone help me understand.




....

In my Stalin book review post, one of the tidbits I forgot to include was that many of the women in Stalin's entourage (the wives of his ministers and the women in his family) were very pushy and vocal with Stalin on all sorts of large and small matters. Their politically astute husbands tried to warn them of the tiger they were teasing, but the women felt they had special access. As years went by and times got bad, Stalin punished most of these women with prison and exile. Let this serve as a warning to all the loudmouth women in my life...





This picture of a young Stalin kind of looks like a mix between Johnny Depp and Keanu Reeves, don't you think?



....

Here's a story I heard the other day.

A few months ago, and aide awoke President Bush in the middle of the night and said "Mr. President, we have something of an international crisis on our hands. An hour ago 3 Brazilian soldiers were killed in Iraq."

President Bush furrowed his brow and he said "Oh no, that's terrible. How many is a Brazilian?"




....

I know I'm late to this party, but I thought it was very obnoxious for Attorney General Holder to call us a nation of cowards on race. And no, I'm not one of those people who believes our leaders can never give the nation constructive criticism; in fact I HATE our culture of outrage that grasps at any perceived slight. And I'm open to the fact that we may well be a nation of cowards when it comes to talking about race. But for our FIRST black attorney general, who was appointed by our just-elected FIRST black president to throw that hammer down is a bit of overkill. And I think much of the reason many people are such race cowards is that we've been cowed into silence by the P.C. S.S. (led by the honorable Reverends Jackson and Sharpton). We are only allowed to assess and discuss the wrongs committed by whites, but discussing any committed by blacks is completely off limits and punishable by crucifixion. And this from the yellow coward who signed off on the Marc Rich pardon. Give me a break.

Book Review

Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, by Simon Sebag Montefiore

Great book. Very well written. Fascinating subject. I love reading about leaders, good and bad, and one of the reasons war is so interesting to me is that it brings all types of leaders (political, martial, and social) to the fore and drops them all into the same pot of boiling water. It’s the same reason the thought of shoving a polar bear, a lion, a tiger, three wolves, and six Rottweilers into a 50x50 ft enclosure appealed to me as a kid. Sure, I don’t like to see the blood and pain, but I love to see how each leverages his and the others strengths and weaknesses, which temporary and permanent alliances will be formed, and how things will shake out. I deplore the ugly hell of war, but love the theoretical clash of great personalities and forces. And in that sense, you just can’t beat WWII. Hitler, Stalin, Churchill, FDR, Mussolini, MacArthur, Montgomery, Patton, Rommel, Guderian, Yamamoto, Eisenhower, Zhukov; the list goes on and on. Sometimes I wonder if this cast really is coincidentally full of once-in-a-century characters, or if the circumstances simply made most of them the giants they became.

A few interesting tidbits:

While many of his magnates (think “cabinet”) and their wives quietly lived lavish lives, Stalin mostly kept it real in maintaining a comparatively austere and modest lifestyle.

He could be a superbly warm and charming guy when he wanted. He was also emotionally dead to causing the deaths of tens of millions of his own people.

He was the consummate micro-manager, dictating the smallest details. For example, he personally watched and critiqued every single movie being considered for public consumption.

He loved movies, especially American westerns. Although it’s rumored he put out a hit of John Wayne for being a Western symbol of anti-communism, but this was done in his later senile years, and Khrushchev later told Wayne that he (Khrushchev) rescinded the order.

He worked and partied until 3, or 4, or 5 am, and slept late, which is interesting to me because if memory serves, this is a similar schedule to those kept by Hitler and Churchill, yet it seems so unhealthy and unproductive.

Montefoire (the author) considers him the best educated and most intellectual of all Russia’s modern leaders, from Lenin to Putin. He was a voracious reader.

Of the other heads of state, he was most comfortable around FDR, couldn’t stand Truman, and considered Churchill the best leader of the capitalist bunch.

Montefoire is pretty critical of FDR’s squishyness with Stalin. Stalin felt he could play FDR and Churchill off one another because FDR seemed more set on charming Stalin than reining him in.

His second, and last, wife committed suicide.

During his young days as a Bolshevik revolutionary during the civil war, he spent a couple periods exiled in a kulak.

He died of a stroke in his early seventies.

I thought it was interesting that 3 consecutive leaders of his secret police (the ones in charge of purging the party and country, by murdering, torturing, and exiling millions), in addition to being murderous sadists, were also sex addicts/deviants. When one would take down his predecessor and raid his apartment, he would inherit his extensive collection of “German pornography” and bloody relics (such as the bullets used to kill 2 former Politburo members), keep them as his own until he was taken down, just to have his collection commandeered by the next nutjob. Why are violent psychopaths so often sexual deviants as well? It doesn’t seem that the opposite is true a fraction as much.

Stalin despised and wanted to break the backs of the peasantry. This shocked me, as it seemed fundamentally contrary to the Communist ethic, as I understood it.

He was totally punked by Hitler, refusing to believe Germany would attack (against every shred of mounting evidence) until the last moment.

The Bachelor

That, my friends, is great television. Not since JR was shot, and not until we see 2 men have a real fight to the death (which is at least 3-4 years away) will we see such dramatic television again.

What a classy way to dump your fiance. On national television. What a weasel. Molly should have made him work for it a bit more, and I'm glad Mellisa didn't let him off easy. He came off like a whiny ten year old crying to his mom about having picked the wrong flavor ice cream, eaten half of it, then wanting to exchange the other half for a different flavor.

Don't worry though, Chris is going to be with them every step of the way until the three of them (Jason, Molly, Chris) sort everything out.

XXX: State of the Union

I watched a little bit of the State of the Union Address. What I saw reinforces one of many reasons I think Obama is successful, and one of the things I like most about him. He’s a master at showing empathy for all sides, and he does it constantly. I assume this is part of his natural make up, but I’m sure he realizes the political power of it as well and employs it accordingly. I read The Audacity of Hope (a very good read in many ways, not the least of which is the candid, reasonable picture it gives of why politicians are the way they are and do the things they do; particularly in areas that make us citizens suspicious of them, such as the role of special interests and campaign donations.) a couple years ago and was struck by his habit of expounding all points of view of an issue—even, and most importantly, the one diametrically opposite his own—in their most cogent light. And right before or after he does that, he empathizes with why people would believe that point of view. Some have criticized this professorial approach to ideas as not conducive to the decisiveness called for in high leadership posts. I think that’s ridiculous. My reading of history and its notables tells me that intellectual empathy is a common trait in the most successful leaders. That was one of Bush’s problems. Very little to no intellectual empathy. I usually agreed or was neutral with what he did, so I didn’t experience much frustration, but I can imagine that those on the other side must have felt totally disenfranchised by his administration, because they were so dogmatic, subjective, and arrogant. He didn’t give the vibe that he really understood or cared about what made the other 50% of America tick. While Obama has already done, and surely will do future things I adamantly disagree with, I feel like he tosses a tiny bone my way by acknowledging that the way I feel is legitimate and he understands every angle of it, but just happens to disagree in this case. For example, he was justifying the stimulus package in his speech. He said a few things to sooth conservative angst and suspicion, like placing blame on “people who applied for home loans they knew they couldn't afford,” and adding that we weren’t going to help the obvious cases of this. He also calmed liberal doubt with lines like the one concerning why we should give money to banks that caused part of the mess to begin with. The point is, I still disagree with the stimulus, but I feel like he takes “my” point of view into account and maybe it works to modify some disagreeable parts of the legislation. What’s maybe even more remarkable than his show of empathy, is that he does it while still being a forceful and persuasive champion of his point of view.

I don’t get why more leaders don’t understand this vital principle. I think it’s one of the most effective ways to gain influence.

Other thoughts on the speech event:

Does anyone in the world like Nancy Pelosi? Is she not the most loathsome person since The Emperor in Star Wars? I’m not even talking about her politics; just her person. What is it about her? Is it that she's just the ultimate Serious Susan and every single thing she does or says looks calculated and evil? A few commentators accused Mitt of being a cyborg or robot, because he came across as a little too perfect. Too charming, articulate, polished, adaptable, etc. Well Pelosi is a cyborg because she looks and acts exactly like... a cyborg. An emotionless creation with synthetic flesh glued onto its titanium frame. She needs to go away. For the good of everyone involved.

I still can’t get over what a goofball Joe Biden is. Does anyone remember the used car salesman that Bernie Mac buys the van from in Ocean’s 11? That’s who Biden reminds me of.

Jindal’s rebuttal: Uh Oh. Time to go on Carson.